Boku no Hero Academia – 32

First: yes, this was anime original, and it does show. Not in any weakness, per say, but in extra fat. Take the Katsuki bit, which was funny but didn’t add anything. Best Jeanist was already worried about Katsuki, so why bring this up again? Mostly for the extra minutes it added to the episode. It was amusing, but forgettable. Ditto with the beleaguered assistants, though that was short even if it didn’t add anything, so it was mostly inoffensive. Compare that to the tank bros, where they actually showed that heroes do work as unglamorous as picking up garbage, so something new! That was better.

Of the short vignettes, Uraraka’s training was kind of neat in that it gave a concrete clue as to how specifically she might get better at combat, though it was still unnecessary. I liked Jiro’s the best, just for that moment where the hostages called her a hero, and that little smile. Feels good to be appreciated.

The meat of the episode was all with Tsuyu-chan, though, and while it showed a little anime original weakness, it developed into something really good! I mention the weakness because the new characters were pretty derivative—Selkie (Seki Tomokazu) combined a quirk similar to Tsuyu’s (can do everything X animal can do) with Gunhead-level surprising cuteness (with the wrinkle of no one but Tsuyu thinking he’s actually cute, which, I’ll admit—I smiled), while Sirius (Koshimizu Ami) was another hearing-focused hero just like Jiro. It was also a touch slow to start, which screams “needs editing!” to me. Tighter pacing early on would not have gone amiss.

But for an anime original storyline, it ended up really good! The mission, once it really got going, was thrilling enough that I was leaning forward in my seat, even though obviously Tsuyu-chan wasn’t going to die. (Even if it wasn’t anime original, that wasn’t going to happen, but especially not since it was.) Give partial credit to how easy it is to have superheroes react to a threat—you don’t even need to give them a personal reason, it’s literally their job, the writer just needs to have something happen in the vicinity—but from taking the Captain out of commission to everything that happened on the drug smuggler boat, the story beats were solid and exciting. The pacing from the time they saw the decoy boat onward was spot on, too. They even managed to work in a little character development for Tsuyu, the kind of thing that easily could have been skipped (as it was in the original), but gave extra soul to this episode. And that scene at the end! What a reward for our intrepid frog.

I was concerned, though optimistic, going into this episode, and it looks like anime team didn’t let us down. It still was clearly anime original, with some of the issues that entails, but the final product, on the balance, was worth our time. Doing too many more of these would be a mistake, but as a once in a while thing, if this is the quality level we’re going to get, it’s all right with me. Kudos to the crew at Bones. Now let’s get back to the story proper.

Woulda been nice to see what more students were doing, but that would have required creating more out of whole cloth, which is dicey. It also would have prevented any one student’s storyline from having some actual drama and tension to it, which would have been the bigger loss. I’m happy with the decision they made.

When Froppy said that she learned a bit more about how to be a hero, I could be wrong, and I hope I’m not, cause that would mean she learned to listen to her superiors more when that wouldn’t be reliable all the time, as maybe the superiors are compromised, as they clearly were this time. No, what I hope she learned from this episode is to practice her professional judgement as the situation sees fit. What she did in this episode, one would think that she merely followed what Sirius said to her, about not doing what the villain wants her to do just for the sake of their safety. No, I think what Froppy did was practice her professional judgement. She thought carefully, yet quickly, about the consequences of her actions, and she went forward with her plan. Now that would be quite the development, because being a hero is a job in which professional judgement is even more important than in any other job I think.

I took it as being about deciding what was important to YOU as a hero. It could have been making sure that everyone makes it out alive, even if that means the villain gets a win. That would have been valid, and maybe even right. She appears to have opted for doing everything she can to foil the villain’s plot, even if her or her companions end up getting hurt. That’s a more heroic way of doing things, at least.

It was nice to see a bit of Froppy’s story with her internship. She has like the best kind of internship.. she actually got to experience a real life situation and she is treated with respect by the heroes, it was actually really nice to watch. That’s the kind of internship I would like to have in the future xD